Mifepristone challenge is about more than abortion access -- it's about keeping ideological interests out of fact-based.. [View all]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/12/20/opinion/mifepristone-supreme-court-abortion-pill-fda/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/JcKux

Before the Supreme Court recessed for the holidays, it teed up a frontal attack not only on access to safe abortion care in America, but also on the ability of the Food and Drug Administration to ensure that all Americans can get safe, effective medical treatments of all kinds.

By taking up a case that will determine the future availability of mifepristone, half of the two-drug medical abortion regimen that has been administered for more than two decades, the court didn’t just place reproductive rights squarely on its docket for the second time in three years. More broadly, it will determine whether the judgment of FDA experts, based on a broad body of medical scientific research, can be second-guessed in court on the basis of political and religious ideology.

Such a ruling would place the safety of all Americans at risk. The justices should follow the history of cases allowing courts to interfere with the FDA’s judgments in only the rarest of circumstances: when its actions are deemed arbitrary and capricious. The approval and use of mifepristone, a drug used in more than half of abortions in America, does not meet that standard.

A ruling upholding a federal appeals court decision rolling back access to the drug would, according to the Department of Justice, “upend the regulatory regime of mifepristone, with damaging consequences for women seeking lawful abortions and a health care system that relies on the availability of the drug under the current conditions of use.”

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